I've owned a Corolla Verso T-spirit (automatic) for a year now, and its been fantastic. We've a little boy and a baby girl, and it is an ideal family car for us...transporting them and their parapharnalia is relatively painless! I had testdrives in its MPV competitors and this came out the best as it met our needs - a spacious family car which is easy to drive. The car itself is very spacious, lots of head and legroom with tons of storage pockets and drinks holders - I'm still finding new ones! In the front the dashboard and controls are attractive and modern looking, and it has a nice leather steering wheel. All the dials and controls are easy to read and use, and the passenger and driver seats have arm rests making an already comfortable ride luxurious. Seats are comfortable as are the seat belts, and the seat heights in the front adjust and recline etc. The stereo is quite complicated but the basic controls for that and the CD player are on the steering column. There's a manual sunroof in the front and an electric one in the back, though the aircon is so good we rarely remember to use them. There are good interior lights for front and back too. Everything is nicely finished and the fabric quality (seat covering) is good. The best thing about the Verso (for families) is that on either
side of the rear passenger seat there is a pop-upbooster seat, which is superb for small children. It gives them good visibility and their feet rest in their own footwell - keeping them off the seat in front! The middle seat drops down ma,king a table with drinks holders for the rear passengers and I'd imagine that this is also a great way to separate squabbling children!! Using a rearfacing babyseat in the car is easy as the car is higher off the ground than normal family cars. Door open wide and are heavy so they dont feel like they'd blow open in a gust of wind when you've got your hands full. The boot opens to horizontal, giving excellent shelter when its raining and you're unloading the weekly shop or whatever. The Verso label refers to the MPV-style height of the car. This height is excellent in terms of passengers getting in and out (older passengers have commented on how comfortable and easy it is to do this), and also for loading the bootspace, as there is no need to lower things into or lift things out of the boot - the floor of the boot is the same level as the bumper of the car - there is no 'lip' to drag things over. The parcel shelf folds back in sections to enable you to reach into the back of the boot easily, and the seats all come out to give greater space for transporting furniture and bikes etc. There's lots of space for a pram as well as shopping. The car itself is really easy to drive. I'm not tall, and yet I've never had visibility problems and it handles well on corners and so on. Sometimes when travelling uphill on motorways it seems to lack power, but acceleration can be boosted by pressing a button and taking overdrive off - effectively dropping a gear. It's just had its first service, which revealed no problems at all and although its not exactly economical mine is an automatic and I chose this feature for ease of driving rather than economy. There have been no maintenance costs at all and I've never needed to top up oil or water etc. Toyota do a service plan which roughly works out at £300 for 3 years servicing. I pay by DD so its barely noticeable and they seem to have done a thorough check... although a valet clean would have been much appreciated!!!! All in all a great car. Lots of well thought out features, nicely finished throughout, and a pleasure to drive and I'd definitely have another.it can be a two seater with a boot the size of a small van (a blow up double mattress will lie flat in the back) a spacious 5 seater with ample head, leg and shoulder room all round and a large boot big enough for a dog cage and push chair or a 7 seaterminibus (with very limited boot space - enough for a few squashed up coats).
It has cruise control, a six speed manual gearbox, rear parking sensors, all round alloys with disk brakes and front fog lights. The CD player also reads mp3 format disks. Best of all it has duel zone climate control and rear privacy glass to help keep it cool. When driving around town the computer shows that I average 60 mpg and on the motorway over 70 mpg. However this is about 10% over the real consumption as my lowest self calculated mpg was 52 mpg rising to 60 mpg as a best ever on a full tank.
Refinement is good as the gear ratios are set perfect. 30 mph is 1400 rpm in 4th 40 mph is 1400 rpm in 5th 50 mph is 1400 rpm in 6th 70 mph is 2100 rpm in 6th
This means that you never need to take the engine above 2000 rpm so it stays very quite. If you go up to 3000 rpm + it takes off like a scalded cat and you reach the speed limit in next to no time. Even with 7 adults on board the engine doesn't break into a sweat. There is enough space for 7 people if you adjust all the chairs on the runners, however leg room is then tight for all passengers, less so if you just have small kids in the back.
Plus points: 60 mpg, refined motorway cruiser, very flexible rear with 5 fold flat seats, high up driving position, real in gear punch above 30 mph.
Bad points: Poor turning circle, front armrests too small to be comfortable, cup holders can only take the smallest sized water bottles, right turn indicator self cancels too early (if you are turning right on a roundabout and have to initially turn left it will cancel), electric windows and radio don't work unless the key is in the ignition and start button is pressed.
Niggles - headlights don't project very far unless on full beam, computer can only show one piece of info at a time (not possible to see both the clock and current mpg at the same time etc), dashboard is always illuminated but dims when you put your headlights on (good so you don't get dazzled at night, bad when at dusk when the dimmed dash it difficult to read). I would recommend this car, I also test drove some of its competitors in comparison to the verso:
Mazda 5: Lower driving position, only 6 adult sized seats VW Touran: Diesel engine much noisier and seats have to be removed to use all available boot space C4 Picasso: Looks much bigger but feels much smaller on inside and the driving position is not comfortable as it is offset. Ford S-MAX: Too long and wide and feels cheap inside Honda FRV: Only seats 6 and feels small and cramped compared to all other MPVs Vauxhall Zafira: Offset driving position and coarse engines.
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Apr 23rd, 2009
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